


Bertie Self-Isolates

by attheborder



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gentle Pandemic Dom Jeeves, Getting Together, M/M, Quarantine, Spanish flu, health and safety: i'll be health you be safety, whatever the opposite of sickfic is. healthfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: It's 1918, and a terrible flu has struck London. Jeeves tries to convince Bertie to stay inside.
Relationships: Reginald Jeeves/Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
Comments: 50
Kudos: 194





	Bertie Self-Isolates

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to curtaincall for the beta, and obstinatrix for the inspirational phrase "Gentle Pandemic Dom Jeeves." please disregard all timeline/accuracy mistakes, i know there are a million. in the interest of being as contrived & self-indulgent as possible i have ignored a lot of things.

“I’m going out.”

“Do you think that wise, sir?” 

“I suppose you’re going to say I’d best stay in.” 

“Yes, I would advise something along those lines—” 

I shook my head. “I won’t hear of it, Jeeves. A free fellow must have his rambles, no matter the dark gossip going round. It is one’s right.” 

“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves, inclining his head towards the door. 

But instead of bounding forth, I lingered. There is no other way to describe it. Jeeves had performed a bit of the reverse p. on me, and now I was having a second-guess of profound proportions. 

“I think,” I said slowly, “that I shall delay my expedition.”

Jeeves nodded. “I’ll prepare your supper, sir.” There was the hint of something smilish on his countenance, but it could have been a trick of the light. I retreated to my boudoir with the proverbial tail between the legs, resolving to not be so easily cowed on the morrow. 

I suppose you’re wondering how this odd sequence came to unfold. Bertram Wooster, trapped in his flat like some sort of captive cheetah? Impossible. Who is he, without regular trips to the Drones? Without pushing round to rallies and parties and to-dos? 

Anyway, I’ll tell you. It was September, I recall, and an autumnal spirit was having its way with the city. All was bright and in high regard, helped along by the general sense of forward movement in the political sphere. 

But within the Wooster domain, all was not at peace. You see, Jeeves had started— well, I don’t have a better way of putting it. _Fussing._ I’ve always admired the chap for the care he takes in every aspect of his position, but when one starts to be treated like one of those sticky sorts of brand-new kangaroos, all pink and dependent, one has to speak up. Jeeves is my valet, not my nursemaid. 

“Jeeves!” I said, sitting up straight in my chair, as he came at me for the third time that week with a thermometer. 

“Sir?”

“Let it out. Whatever bothersome thing itches at you. I know it lurks beneath. Leagues below, festering in the deep. Come on, then, and put that bally thing away. I’m not exactly on death’s door, you can see that, can’t you?” 

Jeeves replaced the device inside his pocket, and asked, “Have you heard of the Spanish Flu, sir?” 

I let him get on with it. The thing had floated through over the summer, knocking down grannies and youths alike. It had recently returned with a vengeance, and London’s hospitals were crowded with the infirm. 

“The matter seems serious,” I said, when he’d finished.

“In my opinion it is, sir.”

“And, if I understand correctly, you think I’m in all sorts of great danger.”

“So my sources tell me, sir.”

I brooded in silence for a moment. Jeeves’ concern, on surface, seemed misplaced. Surely, it was just a grippe like any other? Yes, I was historically liable to be laid up by one if it came my way, but I believed myself to have grown out of it, having been in topping health since shortly after Jeeves began his service. 

Briefly, I wondered if my amalgamation of aunts would be of use to me in this situation, but it was not fated to be. Aunt Agatha’s Woollam Chersey is not a place that one runs off to; rather, it encourages the act of departure like a boarding bell at Paddington. And Aunt Dahlia was not in residence at the moment at Brinkley Court, due to some sort of restoration work being done on the place. 

Besides, as Jeeves assured me, the bally thing was everywhere. One could not simply escape it by scampering off to the countryside. It might follow one there on swift wings of befouled peril. 

“It is not like the plague, sir,” he said. “A rural retreat would not protect you. The numbers from the counties are just as dire.” 

“The plague?” 

“The Black Death, sir. When the disease swept London in the late sixteenth century, killing thousands, Shakespeare retreated to—” 

“Jeeves, enough!” I did not like the sound of all this talk of plagues and deaths, and I made it known. “I won’t have any more of this subject. Haven’t you any decorum? It’s not exactly light afternoon chit-chat.” 

“You’re quite right, sir. I’ll refrain from further discussion.” 

I biffed off to the Drones for the afternoon, leaving Jeeves to his grim prognostications. I thought I might try to bring some bit of positivity back for the chap, since he seemed to be in dour spirits. Surely I could pick up a story in the smoking room that would do him good, maybe even provide him with a diverting assignment.

I wandered over to where Bingo Little was sitting, and upon noticing me he glanced up with a limpid stare. “Hullo, Bertie,” he said dully. 

“What on Earth’s the matter, Bingo?” I said, settling in across from him. I prepared myself for the usual tragicomedic fare. Bingo is a cove you can depend on for a corker of a tale, usually to do with a waitress or actress or other-ess. 

“Haven’t you heard? Freddie Buttersworth’s died.”

“Oh,” I said simply, not knowing quite what else to contribute. “What was it— motor accident, then?”

“No,” Bingo said. “He got sick. Never been sick a day in his life, and then, well. Just like that.” 

“What on earth happened?” 

Bingo wiped at a moody eye. “It’s this Spanish Flu, Bertie. It carried him off. I saw him just Thursday, he was hale as a hare. Springy as usual. But next thing you know, he’d gone all blue, couldn’t breathe at all. Took less than a day, all told...” 

I couldn’t say I’d ever met the fellow in question, but his name was familiar, and the tale shook me to the core. Here today, gone the next, whisked up to the great Eton-Harrow match in the sky. Not exactly the kind of fluffy fare I’d hoped to ferry home to Jeeves. 

When I returned, I put a variety of queries to my man.

“How long is it supposed to go on, anyhow?” 

“These things come and go, sir,” Jeeves said knowledgeably. “Not more than a few months, at the outset.” 

He was practically hovering over me, looming like a great attentive giraffe. I wondered if he might be concerned I’d already caught the damned thing, from someone at the Drones— and if that were the case, had he no concern for his own health? 

“I see. And what’s the latest from your birds in the know?” 

“The numbers are not good, sir. Steadily rising, according to the most eminent journals of medicine in the country. Entire factories in the countryside have been emptied. They are saying this wave of the disease affects young men in greater numbers than any influenza epidemic to date, and those of your age are an order of magnitude more vulnerable than children or the elderly.” 

Words can be massaged and cajoled, but numbers are impertinent little things. There’s no arguing with them whatsoever.

“Sounds like a dashed terrible way to go.” 

“So it does, sir.”

I hadn’t previously thought of Jeeves as a medical man, but his spongelike qualities re: facts in general were well known to all. I’m sure if I’d asked him about the rates of increase in diagnosis, or the proportion of women to men who recovered, he’d have already thought to set them down for me on a handy cheat-sheet. 

In the evening, the sight of Jeeves re-entering the abode, wearing a protective mask and burdened with a large grocery-bag, caught my eye. 

I straightened up, peeking over the piano at the returning valet, and saw clearly that the man had stocked up, in anticipation of the worst-case. Poking out of his bag I saw a stethoscope, and inside, a variety of salves and unguents.

Vividly, images began to flash past. What if I _were_ to fall ill? A picture of Jeeves dabbing at the fevered brow, and such other caretaking measures as might be ordered by the old M.D. A hand, perhaps, laid upon the bosom, measuring one’s heart rate against the tick of a certain pocket-watch, precisely wound.

I had to admit, it sent the blood a touch abuzz. Jeeves’ hands played a frequent enough starring role in my daydreams, but usually in vague recasts of previously witnessed actions— the folding of a shirt, the shouldering of a suitcase. This way of thinking of him in relation to medical matters was brand new, and devilishly tempting. 

No, no. I did not want to catch this bally bug. The Wooster spirit is solid in its immunity to Romantic pash of the swooning, consumptive type. These were fantasies, nothing more. 

Still, though, thoughts trotted through apace. I did not yet believe I was in real danger. But Jeeves clearly did, and I wondered how far he was willing to go, in pursuit of the protection of the young master’s health. 

He gets like this, you see. When one does not want to toss a mess jacket or a cummerbund to the wayside, Jeeves is apt to become chilled as a penguin. He stiffens up, comes over rather inflexible. 

But this was, I could sense, a different sort of story. It was not a bit of garish apparel that was being played for. It was the very body and breath of Bertram at stake. 

Could it be that the seriousness of the situation had pushed him even further into rigidity? Might one be in danger of finding oneself held hostage, by one’s own man? I decided to test the waters. 

“Jeeves,” I said, in an airy tone, “I’m going out.”

Anyway, that about brings you up to speed to where I started this all off. I did, as previously related, hang back that afternoon, but by the next morning I was itching with renewed vigor and passion, eager to return to my perambulations.

Even as I walked, taking in the sights, I passed nurses with masks strapped to their faces, foreheads above the fabric pinched with fear. In the whispers of passing young men I heard names, ages, _so sudden_ and _horrible disease_ and _could hardly breathe_ and so on. 

Well, it shook me, and I decamped back to the flat, took my tea and had a bath, and tried not to think about any of it at all. It was a tall order, as Jeeves and his thermometer were still in play, and he’d graduated as well to taking my pulse, one solid, warm thumb against the wrist. 

One would like to think one’s head is full of smooth clockwork gears, clicking ahead, implacable and altogether unswayable, but then you go and get proof that it’s rather more like the drippiest of custards, apt to splash in the most unexpected places. 

That is to say, the next day, upon catching sight of a large crowd gathering in Berkeley Square, flags waving and mouths hooting and spraying all manner of germs, all of my remaining determination whiffed away in a light wind.

“Jeeves,” I said, with a slump against the doorframe, “I’m staying in. I’ll watch from the window.” 

He made no joyous leap or frothy grin, but I know Jeeves, and I could tell my man was thoroughly relieved.

“Very good, sir.”

“I’ll take no visitors, not without precautions.”

“A fine decision, sir.”

I collapsed into an armchair, pushed fingers through the hair until it went all odd. Jeeves noted this disarray with a discontented eye, and I hurriedly swatted it back into place.

“What shall you do, Jeeves?” I said, at length. 

He stood there, strong brow raised a fraction. “Sir?” 

“I mean to say, will you keep going out? If I’m to be in all the time, staving off the lurking embrace of sweet release, would you have to stay in too, else risk bringing it home?” An awful thought struck me, and though Jeeves looked as though he had something to say, I barged on ahead. “Do you mean to leave me here, then, Jeeves? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. In fact, I’d encourage it. Take yourself off somewhere sunny. Come back browned as a bog body when the whole rummy business has been done and dusted.” 

“I shall do no such thing, sir. I’ve arranged for deliveries,” he replied smoothly. “A group of us at the Junior Ganymede who are treating this situation with gravity it requires have organized something of a syndicate, to see our charges through this unfortunate period.” 

“A topping idea, Jeeves! You really do think of everything.” 

And so began the isolation of the Woosters. 

Now, I’ve never considered myself a hectic sort of cove. In fact, any aunt of mine could (and would) tell you straight off that Betram is as great a lover of leisure as the reclining Greeks of old. 

But I believe a fellow once wrote something about actions and reactions, and the kinds that were equal and opposite, and such. This enforced rest came off a bit like that, at first. When once I might have been perfectly at peace getting up to absolutely nothing for a stretch of weeks, I was now as antsy as a hill full of the creatures. 

I practiced all of the music I had lying about, duly serenading Jeeves as he puttered. I read through all of my periodicals, twice, and finally spiffed up a literary piece I’d been dithering over for months. I answered letters from distant chums who certainly had not been expecting replies after such a delay. 

I smoked one restless cigarette after another, and at night, I tossed and turned with dreams of the good old days. I had never longed so deeply and purely for the races, the cricket, the music hall. I would even have taken a turn or three around the square with the fearful Bassett herself, had it meant breathing in the fresh autumn air, free of any fear of contagion. 

But eventually, after about a week of cautionary close-quartering, dawn broke, so to speak. Bertram had become a man of the great indoors. The _Times_ crossword became my bosom companion, and I needed little entertainment other than watching Jeeves cross the parlor in his shirtsleeves, preparing one of his concoctions or sorting through a basket of safely delivered provisions. 

“How am I doing, Jeeves?” I asked at breakfast, about twelve or so days in.

“Doing, sir?” 

“On the whole, would you say I’m rallying? Taking it like a champ, what?” 

Jeeves said, in a soupy tone, “You seem to be adapting adequately, sir.” 

I noticed he wasn’t looking at me directly. His gleaming eyes seemed to avoid mine with intention. Physics were again at work here, I detected. Playground physics, to be precise. Like a see-saw, things swung.

I mean to say, the more I came to enjoy the situation, the less Jeeves seemed to treasure it. He’d been all for the bally thing in the first place, I couldn’t understand why he was coming over all stuffed-frog at the sight of me on the davenport, wearing nothing but a pair of cotton pyjamas on the lower half, clearly at peace with my captivity.

When he’d lean over me to light a gasper I detected a shake in his hands that had not been present before my confinement. It jarred me. Those hands were not created to shake, just as that steady gaze was not created to avert.

A theory congealed rapidly: Jeeves was not getting his exercise in. He could not recommend me the gray check over the blue if I had nowhere to wear it; he could not tell me the train timetables if I had no destinations; he could not solve the problems of my friends if I was not allowed to bask in their presence. 

I understand now I was a bit impertinent, barging in on Jeeves the way I did. I was bored as the dickens, had come up with what I thought was a clever plan to lift his spirits— though I cannot remember it now, for the life of me— and in isolation one very easily forgets oneself.

But if I hadn’t forgotten to knock, we never would have— oh, well, you shall see. 

Anyway, when I flung the door wide, I took the man rather by surprise, in the middle of a bit of personal business. Now, I may be a bit fuzzy at times, but never let it be said we Woosters are not perceptive beasts at our cores. Jeeves clearly had, to my eyes, taken himself in hand, and, with sweat beading on his prodigious brow, was close to his finish. 

Jeeves suddenly made a start, and I belatedly realized I’d let out a squeak of some sort, alerting him to the presence. I backed away, goggling a bit, making apologetic noises, before completing a fearful pirouette and hot-footing it back to the parlor.

Some time later, Jeeves emerged and began to prepare supper, starched and put-together, and we did not speak of what I’d seen. I had a book propped open in the lap as he bustled about, but I wasn’t reading. I was giving the situation some consideration. 

It was the rummiest thing. I thought I’d been trapped in here with Jeeves. And an increasingly moody Jeeves, at that. 

But now I saw, clear as noontime— I was trapped with a man like any other. And he did things any man did, such as eat, and sleep, and bring himself off in his lair.

Now, one had to assume that Jeeves normally got up to that sort of thing when one wasn’t about. But now, one was about all the time, and wearing much less than usual, thanks to the lax attitude towards dress one must adopt in the face of feeling cast-awayish. It made a great deal of sense. 

Some instinct drove me then over to the dining table, where I rifled through the newspapers, which were full of page after page of advertisements, all promoting quackery in the direction of curing the grippe. I then came across a medical journal, hidden under some napkins, that spoke of the terrible cost to lives across the country. 

And here I was, safe in my well-apportioned homestead, breathing easy, with all the comforts a man could ask for, protected from the invisible menace outside by the quick thinking and dedication of Jeeves. I felt a swell of gratitude in the bosom that threatened to overwhelm.

I sought Jeeves, and found him braced over the sink, leaning at a desperate angle, head bowed as if holding off some great pain. 

“Jeeves,” I said, and hearing me he straightened up at speed, resuming the posture, or at least attempted to, but I caught him in mid-shimmer, a hand at his warm shoulder. 

You may be, at this very moment, clutching at your chest, moaning a great moan of dismay. He has done it again, you will be saying, he has sent it all down the drain. 

This was no ordinary Woosterian muck-up, though. This might have been the one time, the one and only time, that your Bertie got it right the first time around. And if I’ve got to muck it up for the rest of my life to make up for it, then so be it. I wouldn’t mind, see, because I know Jeeves will be around to fix it. 

I’ll admit to some trepidation on my part. You don’t just go about gently laying hands on your beloved valet without some proof that he beloves you right back. 

But rules, reason, and so on had gone out the door, right before said door was sealed against the rest of the world. And in my opinion, what a fellow gets up to within the comfort of his own home is entirely between him and the walls— especially in times of crisis, what? 

“This is not—” Jeeves began, but I cut in.

“What it is,” I said, “is preventative measures. Prophylaxis, Jeeves.” 

“I can’t say I know what you mean, sir—” 

The poor fellow was near-ashen. I imagined he might be on the verge of quaking, and I couldn’t allow it. I reached up, cradled the back of his renowned cranium with a gentle touch and pulled his forehead to mine. 

“I mean, Jeeves,” I said, quiet and confident, “that cooped up in here, we are both going a bit batty. Better batty than blue around the lips, yes, but still. If we’re to stay ensconced _a deux_ , if that’s still the plan, then the air’s got to be cleared. What’s buried has got to be dug up. There cannot be sickness within as well as without.” 

Jeeves’ pallor had subsided some, but not entirely. He seemed hesitant to speak, or move, but at least he was not avoiding my eyes. 

“Dash it all, I don’t think I’m quite getting this across,” I sighed. “I don’t have your gifts, Jeeves. But I do have it on pretty good authority that you aren’t, as you’d like one to believe, totally immune to human desires.” 

“I admit, sir, I had not entirely anticipated the effect that compulsory proximity to you would have on me,” admitted Jeeves. “These weeks have been a test of my own self-control, one I did not pass.” 

“Oh, Jeeves! Now you know how it feels!” I began to laugh in disbelief. I could hardly get the gist of it out, my concept that at last Jeeves had been h. by his own p. for once, so delighted was I at the realization. “Why didn’t you ever say something?” I asked, once I’d caught my breath. 

“I did have an extensive plan, sir,” Jeeves said quietly, “for use when the time was right, involving a telegram, a blocked pipe, a train compartment, and—” 

“I’m sure it was a cracker of a scheme, Jeeves, and usually I’d be all for it,” I interrupted, “but there’s no sense in you going above and beyond, when I am ripe for the picking, is there?” 

“No, sir. I suppose there isn’t.”

Jeeves kisses like he moves about, which is to say one moment your face is in its usual slack state, and the next it is being caressed with expert ecstasy, with no in-between to speak of, and the general feeling that something impossible and magical has occurred. I’d recommend a Jeeves kiss as a cure-all, but the fact is, I’m rather possessive, and don’t wish to share them. 

Anyway, a few breathless minutes later, with Jeeves like butter in the arms, all warm and gooey, I cleared my throat and got around to the meat of the matter.

“Jeeves, I’ve got to say thank you. There’s no doubt that if you’d not stopped me from vaulting forth, I would be laid up with that horrible flu right now, perhaps even six feet under already. Just the sort of thing my luck would lead straight into.” 

The smallest of lines appeared in his handsome brow as he contemplated. I wished just for a moment that I could reach up and smooth it away, before realizing that I jolly well could, and so I did. 

“I don’t like to think of such things, sir,” said Jeeves. 

“Then, by all means, let’s find something better to do instead.” 

“Very good, sir.” 

Jeeves had been right, of course. It was only a few months, all told, before reports were coming in that the number of cases had dropped prodigiously. By Christmastime England’s air was free entirely of the miasma, and I had been given the go-ahead to return to my daily rounds. 

Now, I don’t know who the other members of Jeeves’ health consortium were, but I highly doubt they spent their confinement engaged in the same enjoyable activities as me and Jeeves. The chances, I think, are low. 

I imagine they emerged when the all-clear sounded, blinking in the daylight, glad to be rid at last of their burdensome companions, and not wanting to step a foot back into their gloomy residence until the next epidemic swept through, at the earliest. 

But not yours truly. No, when my light blue shirt and heather twill were laid out on the bed for the first time since this all started, and Aunt Dahlia was in town and expecting me at the Ritz, I did not feel at all up to facing my old friend the Metropolis. 

“It’s a funny old thing, Jeeves,” I said. “I really thought I’d be a shade more eager to step out at last. When it began, the idea was the only thing that kept me afloat. But now…” I trailed off. 

“I understand completely, sir,” Jeeves replied. His hands— those marvelous hands— were on my shoulder, giving a soothing rub. “A disruption in routine, especially a routine one has grown attached to, can be disturbing. But it must be done. And, if you don’t mind me saying, you are the man to do it.” 

He pressed a gentle kiss into the hairline, and I sighed. “You’re right, of course. Best to get it over with, what?” 

At the door, suited and hatted, I lingered. The temptation to remain was still strong. I wanted to grab Jeeves’ hand and lead him back into the bedroom, where we’d resume our acrobatic routine, so to speak. Even as I called upon the Wooster spirit to sustain me, more encouragement was needed. 

“You’ll be here, Jeeves?” I asked him. It was silly, but I had to. “When I return, I mean.” 

“Yes,” my man said. “I’ll be here.”   
  


***

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [tumblr](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com) and [twitter! ](http://twitter.com/areyougonnabe)


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